These 13 schools made at least 10 appearances in Four Million Club games from 2015-19. But before we show you how it’s about to get even more dramatic, let’s examine how individual teams fared. One American Athletic Conference-only game (2017 South Florida at UCF).58 games between either independents or teams from different conferences (including all five Army-Navy games played during that period).Setting aside the five split “reverse mirror” telecasts where two games were simultaneously sent to different portions of the country on ABC and the other game was available to each section on ESPN2, here is how the 193 single-game telecasts broke down… * All of this data is publicly available at the indispensable Sports Media Watch, where Jon Lewis combs through industry publications and compiles ratings on a weekly basis for a variety of sports. And the conference distribution of the games is quite telling. The audience size ranges from massive (16,841,000 for the 2016 Michigan-Ohio State game) to just above the cutline (4,010,000 for the 2015 Louisville-Auburn game). Of those, 198 telecasts made it into the Four Million Club. Those five seasons featured 1,593 rated telecasts* and dozens more on the ACC Network, Big Ten Network, Pac-12 Network and SEC Network, which weren’t measured for audience size. I didn’t include conference championships or bowls, which fetch different prices. I didn’t include viewing data from the 2020 season because everything about 2020 was weird and I didn’t want to skew the data, so I charted every rated regular-season game involving at least one FBS team from 2015-19. It also helps explain why the schools Oklahoma and Texas left behind are seemingly being left in the cold. So I asked a trusted source who has been involved with many television contracts what audience qualified as meter-moving in this ever-splintering environment, and that source drew the cutline at four million.Įxamining which games cracked the Four Million Club explains a lot about the Oklahoma/Texas move, and it also offers a potential explanation why those three leagues would want to work together. In conversations with television executives and consultants, conference officials and athletic directors, it has become clear that the hunt for premium television product will drive this round of realignment (or, in the case of the alliance, rearranging). These are the games networks are willing to pay premium prices for, and they’re also the type of games the SEC’s addition of Oklahoma and Texas will add to that league’s inventory. What’s the Four Million Club? It’s the group of football games that draw more than four million viewers. It also could benefit the viewers by giving us more interesting games to watch. But if the plan includes a scheduling alliance to create more games in the Four Million Club for each league, then it could be a valuable partnership for all of them.
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